Lowell Cohn: Can Giants storm into the postseason?

Think of the Giants milling outside a medieval castle - the kind you see in the movies. Between them and the castle is a moat and over the moat stretches a rickety bridge. And the Giants aren't allowed to walk across the bridge and enter the big wooden door to the castle. Not just yet.

First, they have to defeat the Mets in Wednesday's NL wild-card game. If the Giants beat the Mets, they cross the bridge, the big wooden door swings open and they find themselves in a large, high-vaulted hall with beautiful stained-glass windows and skylights letting in the sun's beams. And they marvel at the room along with the Cubs and Dodgers and the other playoff teams, all placed in this room of honor.

The Giants aren't there. They believe they will be there. Know they will be there. Madison Bumgarner is pitching the entry game for them, the play-in game, the game that gets them over the moat and inside the door. On planet Earth there is no other pitcher you want in this game. You want Bumgarner.

He hoisted the Giants on his back in the 2014 postseason and lugged them through the World Series to victory. It was among the great pitching performances in baseball history. It was more than that. It was one of the great performances in American sports history.

And the Giants have him ready to go with his burning will to win, with his anger and his savvy and his craft. Him.

He has been vulnerable lately. It's what makes this story so intense, so interesting. You've seen his vulnerability. Gets hit in the first inning. Takes one inning to get all the gears and pulleys and sprockets in sync. And then he's lights out.

Needs to be “on” from his first pitch against the Mets. Can beat New York if he's “on.”

If the Giants defeat the Mets, cross the bridge and walk into the great grand room, they are not second-class citizens, not mere onlookers. They are contenders. They are three-time champs. Did it in 2014 the way they must now. They huddled on the outside in the dust of the road. Stared longingly across the moat. Then walked through the door and took possession while every other team got hurled out of the great hall.

Same thing could happen this time - if they get in. The Giants are dangerous to all other teams. That includes the Cubs, whom the Giants would play in the division series. The Giants could be the most serious team in the entire bunch. Forget everything that happened in the second half of the season. How badly the Giants played. How they diddled away their lead. Degraded their record. Doesn't matter. Over with. Once you gain entry to the great grand room, everything that went before is forgotten.

As the season concluded, the Giants wanted to be at the foot of the bridge. That was their heart's desire. And there they are. They may have the best pitching of the remaining teams. Manager Bruce Bochy - the master wizard? - remade his starting staff. Now has Matt Moore and Ty Blach. Goodbye, Matt Cain and Jake Peavy. Remade his bullpen. Reinserted Sergio Romo as closer. Goodbye, Santiago Casilla.

It is unclear if any remaining team can pitch with the Giants, and pitching wins in the postseason. If they get into the room, the Giants could go all the way. Don't count them out. They've done it before.

The only question for the Giants is this: Will they hit? Specifically, can they hit the Mets' Noah Syndergaard? Certainly, they will field. In the field they are slick. But they go inning after inning without scoring. They did that until the final week of the season when they hit like, well, the Giants used to hit.

Until the final week, just about every opposing pitcher was Sandy Koufax. You saw Brandon Belt strike out so often, then trudge back to the dugout with a look of moral outrage on his face. And you almost never saw Buster Posey hit a home run. What's up with that? And you didn't see Angel Pagan get a hit until he finally began to get hits.

The Giants need to hit against the Mets - just a little - to keep Bumgarner away from exhausting, high-stress innings, even though he loves them.

“I just concentrate on my next pitch,” he said.

His mantra in that drawl as sweet as maple syrup.

Some people say the wild-card game is unfair. Reasonable, knowledgeable people. It should be two out of three games, they argue. That would give each team a reasonable chance instead of the current winner-take-all crapshoot.

Those people are right. Except for one thing - the wild-card game is not about fairness or equity or good feeling. It's not about any of that.

It's one final, lucky, desperate chance to enter the real postseason for teams not quite deserving. Win the game, you prove you deserve. Lose, you never deserved. No one said baseball needs to be fair. And in certain ways, it still isn't.

Those umpires still hunch over the catcher's back and call balls and strikes when a computer could do better. Could exactly map out the margins of the strike zone better than, say, Joe West, although Joe West is very good and is one of the great characters of baseball, and no computer ever could be.

Holdouts like me resent manager challenges and the umps standing there like dopes wearing headphones waiting for New York to decide and us waiting along with them, bored out of our minds. In many ways, baseball used to - and still does - celebrate human frailty and fallibility. Baseball is like life. Like our lives. Fallible to the max.

So, sure, the Giants have one chance, unfair at the core. Let them spit in the face of unfairness, storm the bridge and break down the freaking door.

For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular, go to the Cohn Zohn at cohn.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at lowell.cohn.pressdemocrat.com.